Morning Prayers • Evening Prayers
VATICAN (29th May): After four years in the Caribbean and its tax havens, Archbishop Guzmán, a priest from Valencia, is taking-up residence in The Hague as the Holy See’s new ambassador to the Netherlands. King Willem-Alexander has also changed his team, moving diplomat Paul Bekkers from Geneva to Rome, having previously worked in Ghana, the D.R.C. and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs
SAINT PETER’S (25th May): The Church was slow to condemn the slave trade, Pope Leo has publicly apologised. “It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated,” he wrote in Magnifica Humanitas, a paper on the dignity of humanity in the face of computing power. Safeguarding the timeless truths of revelation, it should not have taken eighteen centuries to recognise the “immense suffering” of so many, infinitely loved by the Lord. “In the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”
VATICAN (25th May): After a meeting with Pope Leo, Albania’s president Bajram Begaj held talks with the Vatican’s chief diplomat, Cardinal Parolin, with “a particular focus” on accession to the European Union. Albania has been negotiating E.U. membership with Brussels since 2009, alongside Montenegro and Serbia
NAPLES (8th May): “The Church is a mystery of communion and everyone, from the moment of Baptism, is called to be a living stone of the edifice, an apostle of the Gospel, a witness to the Kingdom,” Pope Leo told priests in Naples. “Do not forget: you are part of a love story – that of the Lord for His people!”
SAINT PETER’S (11th April): Peace gains ground “word by word, deed by deed,” Pope Leo told a prayer vigil in Rome, “just as a rock is hollowed out drop by drop, or fabric woven stitch by stitch. These are the slow rhythms of life, a sign of God’s patience. We must not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the pace of a world that does not know what it is chasing.”
VATICAN (29th May): After four years in the Caribbean and its tax havens, Archbishop Guzmán, a priest from Valencia, is taking-up residence in The Hague as the Holy See’s new ambassador to the Netherlands. King Willem-Alexander has also changed his team, moving diplomat Paul Bekkers from Geneva to Rome, having previously worked in Ghana, the D.R.C. and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs SAINT PETER’S (25th May): The Church was slow to condemn the slave trade, Pope Leo has publicly apologised. “It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated,” he wrote in Magnifica Humanitas, a paper on the dignity of humanity in the face of computing power. Safeguarding the timeless truths of revelation, it should not have taken eighteen centuries to recognise the “immense suffering” of so many, infinitely loved by the Lord. “In the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.” VATICAN (25th May): After a meeting with Pope Leo, Albania’s president Bajram Begaj held talks with the Vatican’s chief diplomat, Cardinal Parolin, with “a particular focus” on accession to the European Union. Albania has been negotiating E.U. membership with Brussels since 2009, alongside Montenegro and Serbia NAPLES (8th May): “The Church is a mystery of communion and everyone, from the moment of Baptism, is called to be a living stone of the edifice, an apostle of the Gospel, a witness to the Kingdom,” Pope Leo told priests in Naples. “Do not forget: you are part of a love story – that of the Lord for His people!” SAINT PETER’S (11th April): Peace gains ground “word by word, deed by deed,” Pope Leo told a prayer vigil in Rome, “just as a rock is hollowed out drop by drop, or fabric woven stitch by stitch. These are the slow rhythms of life, a sign of God’s patience. We must not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the pace of a world that does not know what it is chasing.”
Radio Maria • Sonyworld © Shutterstock
Sonyworld © Shutterstock • nunsguide@gmail.com
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH • Purity requires modesty, an integral part of temperance. Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden. It is ordered to chastity to whose sensitivity it bears witness. It guides how one looks at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the dignity of persons and their solidarity. Modesty protects the mystery of persons and their love. It encourages patience and moderation in loving relationships; it requires that the conditions for the definitive giving and commitment of man and woman to one another be fulfilled. Modesty is decency. It inspires one's choice of clothing. It keeps silence or reserve where there is evident risk of unhealthy curiosity. It is discreet. There is a modesty of the feelings as well as of the body… Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies. The forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to another. Everywhere, however, modesty exists as an intuition of the spiritual dignity proper to man. It is born with the awakening consciousness of being a subject.
The Eastern Orthodox cathedral, Odesa, Ukraine, damaged by a Russian missile in 2023, remained open for worship and has been fully restored by Italy’s government and the U.N.’s culture agency UNESCO. Pope Leo is due to visit their Paris head office in September; his diplomat to Ukraine, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, says it as a “privilege” and a grace of God to be encircled by armed drones, working with nuns who pray they can stay in the country. “The Holy See never closes its doors,” its former ambassador to Kyiv, Cardinal Gugerotti, told Vatican News, landing from Belarus as political prisoners were released. “When people meet face to face, concrete results are born.” Trained in Croatia’s ancient churches, Archbishop Ante Jozić has also explored talks close to Russia: his car was hit in a tunnel and his counterpart died of a heart attack after agreeing to a meeting in Minsk, but with support from the U.S. president, Donald Trump, a peace deal has settled on the snowy borders of Azerbaijan.
“The rabbinic literature is an almost endless series of Rabbi X says this and Rabbi Y says that, and when one rabbi had the chance of asking God who was right, God replied: ‘They’re both right.’ ‘How can they both be right?’ asked the rabbi, to which God’s apocryphal reply was: ‘You’re also right.’”
CHIEF RABBI LORD SACKS, 1948 to 2020 Cooperniall © Flickr
Becoming a Rabbi Sydney Why Pray? Maryland Widen the Circle California Our Times Rome “Send Me A Parking Space!” Hamburg
“Rabbuni!”
Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the site of Jesus’ empty tomb, shared between numerous churches under a 269-year agreement over sites in the Holy Land
A map is not the same as territory, writes Daniel Boyarin, an American-Israeli professor at the University of California, and for Jewish scholars, the “Son of God” was never a divine title, given instead to the first Kings of Israel, Saul and David, to emphasise their role as the anointed one of God, in Hebrew, the “Messiah”, translating into Greek as “Christ”. But when the people of Israel went into exile in Babylon around 606 B.C., hopes developed of a mighty redeemer, seen in the Book of Daniel as a youthful warrior, riding the clouds of heaven in the likeness of man, “Son of Man” thus referring to a divine saviour, given kingship by a throned elder, the “Ancient of Days.” It is the first vision of the Father and Son and when Jesus heals a paralytic in the Gospel of Mark, telling scribes that the son of man has dominion to forgive sins on earth, it is Daniel he is quoting.
Far from being a radical break or liberation from the laws of Judaism, Jesus fulfils the “highest and most powerful aspirations of the Jewish people”, Boyarin writes; far from setting aside the Torah, or pronouncing all food clean, Jesus points to its deeper meaning, distinguishing between the God-given laws of Moses and newer rules of the pharisees in Jerusalem. From the more traditional fishing villages of Galilee, his mother and his disciples were not only born Jewish, but were deeply devoted Jews, following ancient teaching all their life. Far from a new religion, Christianity should be seen as a conservative strand of Judaism, “the most brilliantly successful” Jewish movement of all time.
Mary Magdalene Sees Christ
The Gospel According to John
Chapter 20, Verse 16
Peter the Apostle stood head and shoulders above all the other apostles for the strength of his religious fervour. “I eat nothing but bread and olives,” he said, “and on occasion some vegetables.” It is also said that when he recalled the sweet voice and presence of the Lord, the intensity of his love overwhelmed him, and he could not hold back the tears. And when he remembered denying the Lord, he would weep profusely. Peter used to get up to pray at crack of dawn, as soon as he heard the cock crow, and this, too, caused him to burst out weeping.
James the Apostle is called ‘brother of the Lord’ because he is said to have looked very like Jesus, so much so, in fact, that they were regularly mistaken for each other. This is why Judas identified Christ with a kiss. “If I see James,” they say, “I shall see a perfect likeness of Jesus himself.” Or he may be called the brother of our Lord because of his pre-eminence, and his exceptional holiness, in recognition of which he was ordained bishop of Jerusalem. He was holy from the moment he was born: he drank neither wine nor strong liquor; he never ate meat; no razor ever touched his head. James is also said to have been the first of the apostles to celebrate Mass after the Lord’s ascension, in the communion of the breaking of bread.
“And who is this Bartholomew?” they asked. “He is a friend of Almighty God...” “Tell us what he looks like,” they said. “His hair is black and curly, his complexion fair, his eyes are large, his nose even and straight, his beard is long, with a few grey hairs, his body well-proportioned. He wears a white, sleeveless tunic with a purple border, and over it a white cloak which has purple gemstones at the corners. For twenty-six years now he has worn the same clothes and sandals, and they look neither old nor dirty. He kneels a hundred times daily to pray and a hundred times every night. Angels walk with him and they never let him grow weary or hungry. His expression is always the same, he is unfailingly happy and cheerful. He foresees everything, knows everything, speaks and understands every language on earth; he knows already what I am telling you now.”
Peter the Apostle stood head and shoulders above all the other apostles for the strength of his religious fervour. “I eat nothing but bread and olives,” he said, “and on occasion some vegetables.” It is also said that when he recalled the sweet voice and presence of the Lord, the intensity of his love overwhelmed him, and he could not hold back the tears. And when he remembered denying the Lord, he would weep profusely. Peter used to get up to pray at crack of dawn, as soon as he heard the cock crow, and this, too, caused him to burst out weeping. James the Apostle is called ‘brother of the Lord’ because he is said to have looked very like Jesus, so much so, in fact, that they were regularly mistaken for each other. This is why Judas identified Christ with a kiss. “If I see James,” they say, “I shall see a perfect likeness of Jesus himself.” Or he may be called the brother of our Lord because of his pre-eminence, and his exceptional holiness, in recognition of which he was ordained bishop of Jerusalem. He was holy from the moment he was born: he drank neither wine nor strong liquor; he never ate meat; no razor ever touched his head. James is also said to have been the first of the apostles to celebrate Mass after the Lord’s ascension, in the communion of the breaking of bread. “And who is this Bartholomew?” they asked. “He is a friend of Almighty God...” “Tell us what he looks like,” they said. “His hair is black and curly, his complexion fair, his eyes are large, his nose even and straight, his beard is long, with a few grey hairs, his body well-proportioned. He wears a white, sleeveless tunic with a purple border, and over it a white cloak which has purple gemstones at the corners. For twenty-six years now he has worn the same clothes and sandals, and they look neither old nor dirty. He kneels a hundred times daily to pray and a hundred times every night. Angels walk with him and they never let him grow weary or hungry. His expression is always the same, he is unfailingly happy and cheerful. He foresees everything, knows everything, speaks and understands every language on earth; he knows already what I am telling you now.”
• Holy apostles of Jesus Christ
Pastries in
Jerusalem
Rugelach (רוגלך)
Originally from Poland, rugelach predate and readily challenge the Viennese and Parisian croissant: the dough is laden with cream cheese, fluffed-up with yeast and stuffed with chocolate, marzipan or apricot jam
Bourekas (בורקס)
Baked with puff pastry in big squares, triangles and swirls, bourekas came to Israel from Spain, stuffed with feta cheese, spinach or potato, a favourite “weekday nosh”
“What shall I compare the kingdom of God with? It is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.”
More than 70 nuns are running a large jam factory behind monastery gates in Viterbo »
Let us reflect on a word that holds “a precious secret of Christian life”, Pope Leo tells the faithful: filled with anticipation, the disciples ask Jesus where to “prepare” the Passover, and his answer is almost a riddle: “Go into the city and a man will meet you, carrying a pitcher of water.”
The Gospel shows us that love is not the product of chance, Pope Leo explains, “but a decision that requires preparation.” Jesus does not face his Passion out of fatalism, but “fidelity” to a path freely followed. That upstairs room, already prepared, shows that God always precedes us. Before we realise, the Lord has prepared a space for us, “and that place is fundamentally, our heart, a room that may seem empty, but which awaits only to be recognised, filled and cherished.”
“Today too, there is a supper to prepare. The Eucharist is not celebrated only at the altar, but in daily life, where it is possible to experience everything as an offering of thanks. To celebrate this does not mean doing more,” the Pope assures us, “but leaving room”, letting go of the demands and expectations that encumber us. Illusions distract us and seek a result, whilst preparation guides us and makes an encounter possible.
“We can ask ourselves, then: what spaces in my life do I need to put in order so they are ready to receive the Lord? What does it mean for me today to prepare?” And we will discover that we are already surrounded by “signs, encounters and words that guide us towards that room, spacious and already prepared, in which the mystery of an infinite love, sustaining us and always preceding us, is celebrated unceasingly.”
THE WORD OF GOD
Bread
Greek: ἄρτος (artos)
He sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go into the city and you will meet a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him, and say to the owner of the house which he enters, ‘The Master says: Where is my dining room in which I can eat the passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large upper room furnished with couches, all prepared.”
Gospel According to Mark
Chapter 14, Verses 13 to 15
Our Lady of the Rocks in Montenegro (“Gospa od Škrpjela”), built on an island formed by fishermen, who piled rocks into Kotor Bay to thank the Virgin Mary after each successful journey, and the silent island of Saint George, with a Benedictine monastery hidden under cypress trees
Anton Matis © Shutterstock
Our Lady of the Rocks in Montenegro
Island & church built by devoted fishermen
Piled-up rocks after vision of Virgin Mary
Silent monastery under cypress trees
Anton Matis © Shutterstock
• Chronicles of the Venerable Bede
Britain is rich in grain and timber; it has good pasturage for cattle and draught animals, and vines are cultivated in various localities. It is well known for its plentiful springs and rivers abounding in fish. Salmon and eels are especially plentiful, while seals, dolphins, and sometimes whales are caught. There are also many varieties of shell-fish, such as mussels, in which are often found excellent pearls of several colours, red, purple, violet, and green, but mainly white. Whelks are abundant, and a beautiful scarlet die is extracted from them which remains unfaded by sunshine or rain; indeed, the older the cloth, the more beautiful its colour. The country has both salt springs and hot springs, and the waters flowing from them provide hot baths, in which the people bathe separately according to age and sex. The land has rich veins of many metals, including copper, iron, lead, and silver. There is also much jet of fine quality, a black jewel which can be set on fire and, when burned, drives away snakes. In old times, the country had twenty-eight noble cities, besides innumerable strongholds, which also were guarded by walls, towers, and barred gates. Since Britain lies far north toward the pole, the days are long in summer, as are the nights in winter...
Britain is rich in grain and timber; it has good pasturage for cattle and draught animals, and vines are cultivated in various localities. It is well known for its plentiful springs and rivers abounding in fish. Salmon and eels are especially plentiful, while seals, dolphins, and sometimes whales are caught. There are also many varieties of shell-fish, such as mussels, in which are often found excellent pearls of several colours, red, purple, violet, and green, but mainly white. Whelks are abundant, and a beautiful scarlet die is extracted from them which remains unfaded by sunshine or rain; indeed, the older the cloth, the more beautiful its colour. The country has both salt springs and hot springs, and the waters flowing from them provide hot baths, in which the people bathe separately according to age and sex. The land has rich veins of many metals, including copper, iron, lead, and silver. There is also much jet of fine quality, a black jewel which can be set on fire and, when burned, drives away snakes. In old times, the country had twenty-eight noble cities, besides innumerable strongholds, which also were guarded by walls, towers, and barred gates. Since Britain lies far north toward the pole, the days are long in summer, as are the nights in winter...
Marco Iacobucci Epp © Shutterstock
Holy Kings
of England
Aldfrid, God-fearing King of Northumbria, listened readily to an English monk once led through snow and pelting hail by a guide in a shining robe, returning from the vision to the great consternation of those weeping about his body. “Do not be frightened,” he said, “for I have truly risen from the grasp of death,” entering the monastery of Melrose, surrounded by a bend in the river Tweed, into which he plunged for penance, reciting psalms, broken ice swirling around him. “Brother Drythelm, it is wonderful how you can manage to bear such bitter cold,” those who saw him said, to which he replied: “I have known it colder.” And when they said: “It is extraordinary that you are willing to practise such severe discipline”, he used to answer: “I have seen greater suffering”
705
Sæbbi, most holy King of Essex, preferred a retired, monastic life to “all the riches and honours of a kingdom”, abdicating to join a monastery, where he was visited by angels, his soul leaving his body “in a splendour of light”
683
Cadwalla, pious King of Wessex, left his throne “for the sake of our Lord and his eternal kingdom”, travelling to Rome to be baptised by Pope Sergius (650 to 701) at the very shrine of the blessed Apostles
688
Britain buys £3.9bn of organic food each year,
led by the King’s “Duchy” organic brand, developing monastic, chemical-free, farming principles
POPE LEO XIV has made Christian unity a key theme of his papacy, praying with King Charles III in the Sistine Chapel and now Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul. They all recite the same Creed (“I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth…), its original Greek wording negotiated over three months at a council convened by Emperor Constantine (272-337) to stop the Roman Empire breaking-up, and in 2025, all Churches celebrated Easter on the same day, but it was an astrological coincidence and they are still aiming for full communion, sharing the same Eucharist from Ethiopia to England and Syria to Scandinavia, following God’s plan to gather all people in Christ. “Every factor of division can be transcended and overcome,” wrote Pope John Paul II (1920-2005), “an immense task, which we cannot refuse.”
“Holy Mary, woman of conviviality, nourish in our Churches the desire for communion. Help them overcome internal divisions, intervene when the demon of discord creeps into their midst, extinguish the fires of factionalism, reconcile mutual disputes, defuse their rivalries, stop them when they decide to go their own way.”
Prayer of Italian bishop Antonio Bello (“Don Tonino”, 1935-1993)
The Turkish Pope
Aziz Antuan is a cherished Catholic
Church dedicated to Saint Anthony of
Padua on the bustling İstiklal Avenue
keeping Turkish lawyers busy; Patriarch
Bartholomew once worked in his father’s
barber shop, did Turkish national service
and has led the Orthodox Church globally
for more than three decades, and even he
struggles to keep hold of once Christian
buildings, turned into museums, then
mosques.
Outside is a statue of “The Turkish Pope”:
Saint John XXIII (1881-1963) was Italian,
but preached here serving as a diplomat,
watching fishermen on the Bosporus at
one in the morning from the window of a
Jesuit house, working all night with small
boats and their torches lit in the pouring
rain. “Imitate the fishermen,” he wrote,
“this is our serious and sacred duty.”
Metro: Şişhane (M2 Line)
And in this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand. I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. “You shall see for yourself that all things shall be well.” And after this I saw God in an instant, that is to say, in my understanding, and I saw that he is in everything. For I saw truly that God does everything, no matter how small; for matters that have been in God’s foreseeing wisdom since before time began befall us suddenly, all unawares. And so in our blindness and ignorance we say that it was accident or luck, but to our Lord God it is not so; for he made everything in the perfection of excellence; and the Holy Trinity is always satisfied with all his works. And God showed all this most gloriously. “See that I am God. See that I am in everything. How can anything be amiss?” And this is his mercy and the direction in which he always leads us for as long as we are here in this changeable life; for the only anger I saw was man’s, and he forgives us for that. Mercy allows us to fail to some extent, and our failing is full of fear and our falling of shame and our dying of sorrow; but the noblest thing he ever made is humankind, and its supreme essence and the highest virtue is the blessed soul of Christ. And his precious soul was beautifully bound to him in the making with a knot which is so subtle and so strong that it is joined into God; and in this joining it is made eternally holy.
And in this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand. I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. “You shall see for yourself that all things shall be well.” And after this I saw God in an instant, that is to say, in my understanding, and I saw that he is in everything. For I saw truly that God does everything, no matter how small; for matters that have been in God’s foreseeing wisdom since before time began befall us suddenly, all unawares. And so in our blindness and ignorance we say that it was accident or luck, but to our Lord God it is not so; for he made everything in the perfection of excellence; and the Holy Trinity is always satisfied with all his works. And God showed all this most gloriously. “See that I am God. See that I am in everything. How can anything be amiss?” And this is his mercy and the direction in which he always leads us for as long as we are here in this changeable life; for the only anger I saw was man’s, and he forgives us for that. Mercy allows us to fail to some extent, and our failing is full of fear and our falling of shame and our dying of sorrow; but the noblest thing he ever made is humankind, and its supreme essence and the highest virtue is the blessed soul of Christ. And his precious soul was beautifully bound to him in the making with a knot which is so subtle and so strong that it is joined into God; and in this joining it is made eternally holy.
• Revelations of anchoress Julian of Norwich
World Peace Calculator
99.99%
Approximately 240,000 people were killed in military conflicts in 2025, with casualties in Ukraine (82,298), Palestine (20,990), Sudan (20,198) and Myanmar (16,927). Over 50 years, whilst the global population has more than doubled to 8.2 billion, the number of casualties has almost halved since 1975, when Indonesia invaded East Timor and the United States evacuated Vietnam. One death is too many and thousands are a crime of inexpressible pain, but with 99.997% of people free from harm, we are living in a time of unprecedented and rapidly improving global stability and peace.
The NUN’s GUIDE to LONDON
Photos: Wells & Canterbury Cathedral
Diliff & Tobiasvonderhaar © Wikipedia
Giacomo Casanova, the self-celebrated adventurer (1725 to 1798), was baptised in San Samuele on the Grand Canal in Venice and studied church law in Padua, but in London he lived at 21 Soho Square, now the presbytery to Saint Patrick’s, a thriving home for travelling seminarians and earnest volunteers, serving thousands of meals for the homeless under a Venetian bell tower, sweet peas on the roof garden and the inexhaustible Canon Sherbrooke
CONVENT CLASSICS
CONVENT CLASSICS
19891992
1986
2004“Entering a cinema is like crossing a threshold. In the darkness and silence, vision becomes sharper, the heart opens up and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined. Cinema is much more than just a screen; it is an intersection of desires, memories and questions. It is a sensory journey in which light pierces the darkness and words meet silence. As the plot unfolds, our imagination broadens and even pain can find new meaning.”POPE LEO XIV
A symbol of peace and consecration in the Bible, of God’s spirit and boundless provision, the global olive oil crop has more than doubled in 50 years, led by Spain, Italy, thriving trade and rising prosperity, filling 7 billion bottles (500ml)
Badminton is twice as fast as tennis, the baselines less forgiving, without the second chance of a favourable bounce, and Carolina Marín has won 13 gold medals for Spain, but sport is not about “destroying your opponent”, she told tennis aficionado Pope Leo in Madrid, giving him her racquet. Rules are the lines that make it possible to meet one another fairly and your opponent is a “companion” who “challenges us to give our very best as well.” Under pressure to make money, “we athletes wish to uphold the pure joy of playing”, Marín said, “the enthusiasm we knew as children.”
THE WORD OF GOD
Oil
Hebrew:שֶׁמֶן (shemen)
The wife of a member of the prophetic brotherhood appealed to Elisha. “Your servant my husband is dead,” she said “and you know how your servant revered the Lord. A creditor has now come to take my two children and make them his slaves.” Elisha said, “What can I do for you? Tell me, what have you in the house?” “Your servant has nothing in the house,” she replied, “except a pot of oil.” Then he said, “Go outside and borrow jars from all your neighbours, empty jars and not too few. When you come back, shut the door on yourself and your sons, and pour the oil into all these jars, putting each aside when it is full.” So she left him; and she shut the door on herself and her sons; they passed her the jars and she went on pouring. When the jars were full, she said to her son, “Pass me another jar”. “There are no more” he replied. Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God, who said, “Go and sell the oil and redeem your pledge; you and your children can live on the remainder.”
Second Book of Kings
Chapter 4, Verses 1 to 7
Mary and the apostles outside the
Ta’ Pinu Basilica, Gozo island, off
Malta (Salajean © Shutterstock)
Saint Joseph’s parish church in
the farming valleys of Manikata,
Malta (Didi8600 © Wikipedia)
The Widow’s Oil can be seen as a sheer miracle, like ‘The Feeding of the 5,000’, or we have more than we realise: the widow has “nothing in the house”, she insists, “except a pot of oil”, which symbolises God’s blessing, poured out in abundance. We look for the Almighty in the night sky and in the vastness of time and it is daunting to consider our smallness, and the challenges we face, but easier to see God’s will in the small details of life, such as unfinished tasks entrusted to us, leading, one jar at a time, beyond anything we could have envisaged.
¡ Esta es la juventud del Papa !
We have headphones, music and distractions, Pope Leo told huge crowds of youngsters, filling the streets of Madrid on the first night of his visit, but “it’s really important that we develop the capacity to stay in silence,” he said, leading a quiet prayer vigil late into the evening, ending in fireworks. Freeing ourselves from “the clamour of a thousand voices”, we realise that some mislead us, others exploit us, but in silence “the truth remains.” And by the morning, crowds were chanting again. With the streets carpeted in flowers, altars and pulpits built in the plazas, this was not an exhibition or a remnant of folklore. “It is a profession of faith in the presence of the risen Lord,” the pope said, leading Mass and a procession for 1.2 million people. “Jesus walks through the streets, crosses the squares, visits our neighbourhoods, inhabits the places of our daily lives.” Beaming beside him was the Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal Cobo Cano, and in his cathedral, a cherished statue of the Virgin of Almudena, meaning “Little Fortified City”, surrounded by the hostile plains of Castile. Some walls cannot be seen, the cardinal said: fears, distance, loneliness, but Madrid was built on a vast aquifer from which its baptism springs.
Iglesia de San Antón, a “field hospital” in Madrid, where parishioners bring animals to be blessed on January 17th, remembering desert hermit Saint Anthony the Abbot (251 to 356), who had a miraculous friendship with a pig, ringing a bell when it was time to pray (Chueca metro, 63 Calle De Hortaleza)
Oscar Gonzalez Fuentes © Shutterstock
Iglesia de San Antón, Madrid. Parishioners
bring animals to be blessed every January 17th,
remembering desert hermit Antony the Abbot,
who had a miraculous friendship with a pig
Oscar Gonzalez Fuentes © Shutterstock
“When the Son of Man
comes, will he find any
faith on earth?”
Street scenes in Valletta by Giannis
Papanikos and Sergio Capuzzimati
© Shutterstock
The full immensity of Jesus is
revealed when he makes himself
small, says Pope Leo XIV, laying
aside his “infinite majesty” to
walk as our neighbour on the
earth, revolutionising pagan
conceptions of God
From the drawings of Alejandro Beautell and Fernando Menis, chapels are popping-up in
Tenerife »
Jerome, while still a young man, went to Rome and there received a thorough education in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Day and night he devoted himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures. Jerome went to stay with the bishop of the city of Constantinople. He set out to live in the desert, then, after four years, returned to the town of Bethlehem, to re-read his library of books, and fasted every day until evening and laboured for forty-five years over his translation of the Scriptures. One day, as evening came on, a lion came limping into the monastery. The other monks at once fled, but Jerome greeted the lion as if he were a guest. The lion showed him his hurt foot, and his pad was full of thorns; and the lion became so tame that he lived among the brethren. Jerome gave the lion a special duty to perform. The monks kept an ass which carried their firewood in from the forest, and the lion was to watch over it while it grazed. And so he did. He was its constant companion, like a conscientious shepherd, making sure to keep careful watch as it grazed. Then one day, the lion fell deeply asleep, and some merchants who were passing by with a train of camels saw the ass, and smartly made off with it. When the lion could not find his companion, finally he returned sadly to the gates of the monastery. He was so ashamed of himself, however, that he dared not go in. The brothers reported the matter to Jerome. They made the lion do the ass’s work, and loaded all the firewood they cut on to his back. Then suddenly, in the distance, he saw the traders with their loaded camels and, leading the caravan, the ass, and with a deafening roar he rushed upon the merchants and drove the camels, laden as they were, back to the monastery. The lion now began to run about as he had done before, stretching himself out on the ground before each of the brothers and wagging his tail, as if to beg pardon for the crime he had never committed.
Jerome, while still a young man, went to Rome and there received a thorough education in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Day and night he devoted himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures. Jerome went to stay with the bishop of the city of Constantinople. He set out to live in the desert, then, after four years, returned to the town of Bethlehem, to re-read his library of books, and fasted every day until evening and laboured for forty-five years over his translation of the Scriptures. One day, as evening came on, a lion came limping into the monastery. The other monks at once fled, but Jerome greeted the lion as if he were a guest. The lion showed him his hurt foot, and his pad was full of thorns; and the lion became so tame that he lived among the brethren. Jerome gave the lion a special duty to perform. The monks kept an ass which carried their firewood in from the forest, and the lion was to watch over it while it grazed. And so he did. He was its constant companion, like a conscientious shepherd, making sure to keep careful watch as it grazed. Then one day, the lion fell deeply asleep, and some merchants who were passing by with a train of camels saw the ass, and smartly made off with it. When the lion could not find his companion, finally he returned sadly to the gates of the monastery. He was so ashamed of himself, however, that he dared not go in. The brothers reported the matter to Jerome. They made the lion do the ass’s work, and loaded all the firewood they cut on to his back. Then suddenly, in the distance, he saw the traders with their loaded camels and, leading the caravan, the ass, and with a deafening roar he rushed upon the merchants and drove the camels, laden as they were, back to the monastery. The lion now began to run about as he had done before, stretching himself out on the ground before each of the brothers and wagging his tail, as if to beg pardon for the crime he had never committed.
• Dutiful lion of scholar Saint Jerome
Diamonds
After a trip to Turkey and Lebanon, organised by Pope Francis, Pope Leo’s nine-day Africa tour was meant to be his first international outing, visiting universities and hospitals in Algeria, Cameroon, the diamond-rich Angola and Equatorial Guinea, but as bishops and diplomats did the groundwork, his helicopter took-off first for Monaco, where churches are less prominent than jewellery shops and casinos. The Kingdom of God “shakes up the unjust configurations of power”, he told tense-looking officials, “those structures of sin that create chasms between the poor and the rich, between the privileged and the discarded.”
The church’s daily Bible reading, read-out in Monaco’s terracotta football stadium, was the high priest’s ominous prediction that Jesus must die for the nation. Corruption darkens our gaze, Pope Leo cautioned, turning beauty into vanity, wealth into greed. “Peace is not merely a balance of power,” he explained, looking resigned to God’s will. “It is the work of purified hearts, of those who see others as brothers and sisters to be protected.” The task is sublime and seemed impossible, “unless we give our lives to our neighbour.”
“Your people possess treasures that cannot be bought or taken away. There dwells within you a joy that not even the most adverse circumstances have been able to extinguish. This joy endures and is continually reborn among those who have kept their hearts and minds free from the seductions of wealth. You know well that all too often people have looked, and continue to look to your lands in order to give, or, more commonly, in order to take. It is necessary to break this cycle of interests, which reduces reality, and even life itself, to mere commodities. For the entire world, Africa is a reservoir of joy and hope.”
Pope Leo XIV in Angola
2,460 sisters run 520 schools in Angola, 76 clinics and 48 hospitals
“Ave Maria!”
2,460 sisters run 520 schools in Angola, 76 clinics and 48 hospitals “Ave Maria!”
NASA Johnson © Flickr, MarcelX42 © Wiki
• Little flowers of Saint Francis
“Wait for me here by the way, whilst I go and preach to my little sisters the birds”; and entering into the field, he began to preach to the birds which were on the ground, and suddenly all those also on the trees came round him, and all listened while Saint Francis preached to them, and did not fly away until he had given them his blessing. Now the substance of the sermon was this: “My little sisters the birds, ye owe much to God, your Creator, and ye ought to sing his praise at all times and in all places, because he has given you liberty to fly about into all places; besides which, he feeds you, though ye neither sow nor reap. He has given you fountains and rivers to quench your thirst, mountains and valleys in which to take refuge, and trees in which to build your nests; so that your Creator loves you much, having thus favoured you with such bounties. Beware, my little sisters, of the sin of ingratitude, and study always to give praise to God.” As he said these words, all the birds began to open their beaks, to stretch their necks, to spread their wings and reverently to bow their heads to the ground, endeavouring by their motions and by their songs to manifest their joy to St Francis. And the saint rejoiced with them. He wondered to see such a multitude of birds, and was charmed with their beautiful variety, with their attention and familiarity, for all which he devoutly gave thanks to the Creator.
“Wait for me here by the way, whilst I go and preach to my little sisters the birds”; and entering into the field, he began to preach to the birds which were on the ground, and suddenly all those also on the trees came round him, and all listened while Saint Francis preached to them, and did not fly away until he had given them his blessing. Now the substance of the sermon was this: “My little sisters the birds, ye owe much to God, your Creator, and ye ought to sing his praise at all times and in all places, because he has given you liberty to fly about into all places; besides which, he feeds you, though ye neither sow nor reap. He has given you fountains and rivers to quench your thirst, mountains and valleys in which to take refuge, and trees in which to build your nests; so that your Creator loves you much, having thus favoured you with such bounties. Beware, my little sisters, of the sin of ingratitude, and study always to give praise to God.” As he said these words, all the birds began to open their beaks, to stretch their necks, to spread their wings and reverently to bow their heads to the ground, endeavouring by their motions and by their songs to manifest their joy to St Francis. And the saint rejoiced with them. He wondered to see such a multitude of birds, and was charmed with their beautiful variety, with their attention and familiarity, for all which he devoutly gave thanks to the Creator.
Fruit in Guatemala City
Always running and jumping about, barely listening to adults, Barbara Samulowska (1865 to 1950) was praying the Rosary in a maple tree with her friend, next to their village church in northern Poland, two days after receiving First Communion, when the Virgin Mary appeared to them, dressed in luminous white on a golden throne.
After three months of apparitions, beseeching the faithful to pray the Rosary every day and blessing a spring of water, the bishop was informed and following Mary’s instructions, Barbara became a nun in Paris, living in a deep communion with God, but felt called to missionary work, going to Guatemala to rebuild and reorganise hospitals.
Bundling-up parcels of clothes, keeping the best fruit for the poorest families, “the sisters loved her very much,” one remembered, though she never openly told them about the apparitions. “Let us love the Virgin and trust in her, for she will always guide us with motherly love.”
“When I boarded the boat, I said goodbye forever,” wrote Sister Maria Troncatti. She became a nun at 15 and was a Red Cross nurse in an Italian hospital, but loved reading the lives of missionaries and took a ship to Panama with her sisters, spending the next 47 years in the Amazon rainforest, opening a pharmacy and a hospital. Acting as dentist, surgeon and evangeliser to the fierce Shuar tribe, working 16 hours a day, devoted to Italian saint John Bosco and his motto of work before penance, she had “something more” than virtue, saving the life of the chief’s daughter after a gun battle. “My place is here,” she wrote to her family in Italy from the Andean mountains. “A look at the crucifix gives me life and the courage to work... We will see each other once again in Heaven.”
Sister Maria Troncatti (1883 to 1969) was declared a saint by Pope Leo XIV in October 2025
“When I boarded the boat, I
said goodbye forever,” wrote Sister
Maria Troncatti. She became a nun
at 15 and was a Red Cross nurse in
an Italian hospital, but loved
reading the lives of missionaries
and took a ship to Panama with her
sisters, spending the next 47 years
in the Amazon rainforest, opening
a pharmacy and a hospital. Acting
as dentist, surgeon and evangeliser
to the fierce Shuar tribe, working
16 hours a day, devoted to Italian
saint John Bosco and his motto of
work before penance, she had
“something more” than virtue,
saving the life of the chief’s
daughter after a gun battle. “My
place is here,” she wrote to her
family in Italy from the Andean
mountains. “A look at the crucifix
gives me life and the courage to
work... We will see each other
once again in Heaven.”
Sister Maria Troncatti (1883 to 1969)
was declared a saint by Pope Leo XIV
in October 2025
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“Reading nourishes the mind,” Pope Leo XIV1390
Salajean © Shutterstock
70,000 Catholics get engaged every week and there are many kisses in church art and the Bible: “You gave me no kiss,” Jesus reprimands the Pharisee, “but she has been covering my feet with kisses ever since I came in.” So Argentine priest Víctor Manuel Fernández surveyed the streets
of Buenos Aires and wrote a paper on the theology of kissing, which shocked some Catholics, though we were all kissed once by our parents, and Pope Francis made him a cardinal, speeding-up decisions in an earnest department of priests once known as ‘The Inquisition’, still based in the Vatican, sifting the Church’s official teaching.
So what does the paper propose? “The kiss is the thermometer of love,” Fernández beautifully suggests. “Your whole being goes into a kiss,” a meeting of two souls in a moment in which there is nothing else besides them, “and nothing else matters.” All of human love is united: tenderness, passion, joy, admiration, delicacy, strength, delivery, communication. In one kiss there are “two breathings”, wrote English monk Saint Aelred (1110 to 1167), “two spirits are mixed together.”
Kissing is of timeless importance. “Give me a thousand kisses,” wrote the Roman poet Catullus before the birth of Christ, “then yet another thousand more.” It is almost a “permanent desire”, something imperatively necessary that can never be attained at all, a dream without limits: the kiss is the end, the point of arrival for all the paths and desires of a heart. “If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine,” Romeo promises Juliet, “the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”
There are kisses of every kind: a mother kissing her son, the kiss of a crucifix, or the Bible, but it always means more than a gaze or embrace as it requires more tenderness and respect. “The kiss is when everything else falls short,” Fernández concludes, and in God we find an infinite kiss, an “ineffable kiss that is mysteriously reflected in all kisses on Earth.”
“Idleness is
the enemy of
the soul,” say
nuns making
honeysuckle
& lemon soap
in the fields of
Tuscany »
THE WORD OF GOD
Kiss
Aramaic: נשׁק (nashaq)
A woman came in, who had a bad name in the town. She had heard he was dining with the Pharisee and had brought with her an alabaster jar of ointment. She waited behind him at his feet, weeping, and her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them away with her hair; then she covered his feet with kisses and anointed them with the ointment. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who this woman is that is touching him and what a bad name she has’. Then Jesus took him up and said, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you’. ‘Speak, Master’ was the reply.
Gospel According to Luke
Chapter 7, Verses 37 to 40
Our Lady of Luján is a terracotta icon of the Virgin Mary made in 1630, shipped to Buenos Aires and loaded onto a cart for a distant province, but after just 10km the oxen refused to continue, until the icon was unloaded. Immediately recognised as a miracle, it is now the national shrine of Argentina and for Pope Francis, the first from South America, was a reminder of the profound value of popular piety, known in Rome as “sensus fidelium”, the idea that the humble and trusting faithful are more receptive to the truth and Christ than even the clergy, buried in books and stifled by procedures. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me,” Jesus reassures us. “Wisdom has been proved right by all her children.”
The Assumption of Mary on Lake Bled, Slovenia (“Cerkev Marijinega Vnebovzetja”), with 99 steps from boats at the quay to the wishing bell and beautifully-carved, golden altars dedicated to Mary Magdalene, Saint Blaise and the Archangels, illuminating the whole church (8.30am Mass on New Year’s Day)
Robbie Smith 1 © Shutterstock
The Assumption of Mary, Slovenia, with
99 steps from the quay to the wishing bell,
golden altars dedicated to the Archangels
& boats to Mass from Villa Bled
Robbie Smith 1 © Shutterstock
Donald Trump showing his famous zeal, using tear gas and riot police to have his photo taken at his church in D.C.; every U.S. president in history has attended Saint John’s on 16th Street since it was built in 1816
Melania Trump, known as “The Princess of Slovenia” and the first Catholic First Lady since Jackie Kennedy, clutched her pearl white Rosary prayer beads instead of a bouquet at her Palm Beach wedding in 2005 and flew them to the Vatican to be blessed by Pope Francis on Trump’s first international tour as U.S. president, leaving pink and white roses for the Madonna. “Today's visit with His Holiness Pope Francis is one I'll never forget,” she wrote. “I was humbled by the honor. Blessings to all.”
« Me voici, tout dévoué à toi »
One book that has turned a young American priest into our supreme pontiff is a collection of letters by a clumsy French footman who considered himself damned, so joined a barefoot monastery in Paris, expecting the severest discipline, only to find the Lord resting in the centre of his soul and springs of joy, so continual, he could “scarce contain them.” Having seen a tree stripped of its leaves on a battlefield in mid-winter, Brother Lawrence was resigned to giving-up pleasure, knowing flowers would blossom in due season, but he also avoided formulaic prayers and devotions, making personal appeals to God continually throughout the day (“My God, here I am, all devoted to Thee...”), building a deeply personal friendship, more intimate and casual than any conventional Catholic teaching. In the clatter of a monastery kitchen, or a boat in Burgundy, buying casks of wine for the table, the Lord in turn responded, conversing with Brother Lawrence “in a thousand and a thousand ways, and treats me in all respects as His favourite.” God’s love, he discovered, is like a strong current of water, which we try to resist and hinder, but once we put our whole trust in the Lord and make a “total surrender”, believing beyond doubt in His mercy and “perfect goodness”, joy pours like a torrent that has “found its passage.”
The Church is the visible sign of the union between God and humanity… where God intends to bring us all together into one family of brothers and sisters, united in the embrace of his love. We are all children of God, called to serve one another. No one is called to dominate; we must listen to one another. No one is excluded; we are all called to participate. No one possesses the whole truth; we must humbly seek it together… the supreme rule in the Church is love.
Algorithms underlying artificial
intelligence far surpass humans in
speed and statistical feedback, and
they can even simulate empathy
and understanding, but data
processing is just one dimension
of life and should not overshadow
more valuable human attributes,
Pope Leo writes in his first letter to
the faithful, Magnifica Humanitas.
We often see human limits, such as
mistakes, vulnerability and old age,
as defects to be corrected, but it is
precisely in those limitations that
we find what is most beautiful in
human experience: compassion,
a concern for the needs of others,
generosity, affection, fidelity and
forgiveness, a sincere moral
conscience and our relationship
with God, helping us flourish and
mature. Communion and love are
the real “essence” of life, Pope Leo
reminds us, not efficiency, control
and profit. “We carry within us
lessons that leave their mark like
scars, the memories of a journey
shaped by freedom and failure,
dreams and disappointments. It
is only thanks to the interplay of
these elements that the wonders
of the soul occur within us.”
“
Pope Leo XIV, 26th October 2025
Riccardo De Luca © Shutterstock
Not every curiosity needs to be answered, the pope’s press office says; Google’s A.I. engine has no such qualms,
saying his white zucchetto
is made by tailor
Gammarelli
Providence of the Prevosts
“Robert Francis, you could be Pope one day,” one of the nuns at his school told him…
“He didn't want to hear it.”
• 14th September 1955
Born “Robert Francis Prevost” in the Mercy hospital, Chicago, living in a one bedroom house with two brothers. “After dinner, dishes were put away,” one of his brothers remembers, “my Mum and Dad went in the living room and prayed the Rosary, daily…”
• 19th June 1982
Ordained in Rome having studied maths, Latin and Hebrew at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, forming a pro-life group to march on Washington, then divinity in Chicago, with his final paper on social justice and his heart firmly set on joining missions to Peru, where he led a seminary and became bishop of Chiclayo
• 8th May 2025
Elected Pope after just two years as cardinal, shortlisting bishops for Pope Francis, plus two six-year terms leading the Augustinian religious order, visiting missions in 50 countries, with trips back to the United States to see his brothers and the Chicago White Sox
Baseball, spark plugs & The Blues
Brothers: the happy upbringing of
Father Bob. “He loves to drive!”
Trucking food supplies into the poorest
parishes of Peru: “Wherever there is
discord, he will bring love…”
In prayer and pedal boats, the American
pope spent nearly two decades in Rome
before his election as Holy Father
Interviewing friends & family, a beautiful series on the life of Pope Leo XIV
Filmed by the Dicastery for Communication
Hidden Chapels of Nagasaki
On the Western tip of Japan, closer to
Korea than Kyoto, ten tiny churches are
hidden in rocky inlets, with shy-looking
bell towers and wooden beams, painted
cream, pink and pastel orange. Having
built 40 churches on the coast of India,
Portuguese missionary Saint Francis
Xavier landed at Kagoshima in 1549;
more than two centuries later, chapels
appeared in fishing villages when a ban
on Christianity was lifted. Too small for
large groups, Kashiragashima church
(daily Mass) and Ono (yearly) are two of
the prettiest, but many are protected by
boat journeys, UNESCO World Heritage
status and a visitor centre in Nagasaki
that has instructions on ‘manners’ and
impeccable Lego models of those sites
too distant for the casual traveller.
Fabrizio Maffei © Shutterstock
Sister Teresa Tambelli would
gather-up street children sleeping
under fishing boats on the beaches
of Sardinia and give them
breakfast. Cagliari, the capital, had
been bombed heavily as an airbase
and having lost her own parents at
a young age, she was entrusted to
a guardian at 13, training as a
teacher and nurse, working with
nuns in a hospital in Lombardy,
encouraging her to take the habit.
“Charity is not measured by what
we give,” she instructed, lumbering
bags of provisions, “but by the love
with which we give it.”
Sister Teresa Tambelli (1884 to 1964)
was declared a Venerable Servant of
God by Pope Leo XIV in June 2025
Having lectured on votes for women and lobbied to end the slave trade, Agnes McLaren (1837 to 1913) felt no misgivings, petitioning the pope. Women in India could not be seen by male doctors, so Agnes left her father’s house in Scotland to live with nuns in France, studying medicine in Montpellier. She was baptised as a Catholic and opened a small hospital, Saint Catherine’s, with 16-beds in Rawalpindi, present-day Pakistan, travelling to Rome to negotiate greater sway for sisters in hospital corridors. Soon after she passed into the next life, Pope Benedict XV, the peacemaker pope of the First World War, allowed an Australian nun, Sister Mary Glowrey (1887 to 1957), to take-up the post, training midwives and treating thousands of patients.
Sister Mary Glowrey has been declared a Venerable Servant of God by Pope Leo XIV; Agnes McLaren is buried in France